


Intangible

by tiamatv



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Demisexual Castiel (Supernatural), Friends to Lovers, Ghost Castiel (Supernatural), Ghost Sex, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mechanic Dean Winchester, Temperature Play, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:29:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25818868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: “Hey, Cas,” Dean called out. He dropped his keys into the bowl by the doorway, pushed up both sleeves of his shirt, and let the door swing closed behind him.It’d no sooner clicked closed than he felt something cool brush the side of his cheek and a slip of wind around his waist, a hint of pressure against his back that he could barely feel through his flannel and his jeans.Hello, Dean,Castiel wrote, with the delicate scratch of an invisible fingernail across the flat of Dean’s palm.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 61
Kudos: 242
Collections: The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	Intangible

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags, please! This is fluffy, and I hope it is sweet, but there is angst and there is MCD because, yes: ghost 'fic.
> 
> This 'fic was very lovingly betaed by [FriendofCarlotta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendofCarlotta/pseuds/FriendofCarlotta), who really went above and beyond with it: she helped me rewrite, restructure, and add whole sections, reworded some truly clumsy paragraphs, and took this from something I was kind of 'meh' about to something I feel willing to throw at you guys. She's amazing and so are her 'fics, go take a look!

_“This is Castiel Novak. Please leave your message. I will return it in a timely fashion, and if you are a telemarketer, you will never see me coming.”_

_[New message.]_

“Hey, buddy, I know you’re in session and your phone’s off. I bet today’s gonna be verdict day. Those assholes can’t deliberate forever, right, it’s already been three fucking days! Actually, don’t answer that. Anyway, see you tonight? Text me when you get out of court.”

_[Message left on January 24, 2014, 2:34 PM. Press 7 to delete this message. Press 9 to save. Press 1 for more options.]_

*_*_*_*

_[ Dean]_

_01/24/14 06:12 PM  
_So… you’re not here. what’s today? can you guess? bet you twenty you can’t guess

_01/24/14 06:15 PM  
_Here’s one guess: it’s not verdict day. okay, yeah, it might be verdict day. congrats. anyway.  
No, it’s not Friday, either

_01/24/14 07:22 PM_  
Check your planner, dude. we got you those balloon stickers for a reason. c’mon, they’re bee balloons. you love them

_01/24/14 07:51 PM  
_Get your ass over here. you can wear your suit. I won’t even make fun of it. :zipper_mouth: Sammy’s wearing his. i’ll make fun of him instead.

_01/24/14 08:12 PM_  
Garth is looking for you. he wants a hug

[Picture]

okay I guess he wants a kiss. don’t worry, I’ll defend your honr  
*hungr  
*honor, what the fuck autocorrect, honr isn’t a word

_01/24/14 08:22 PM  
_[Picture]

That paperwork better be keeping you really nice company. you see this? this nice, pretty, juicy Roadhouse burger with extra tomatoes and mayo on the side?

it’s waiting for you, attorney Novak, and it’s getting cold

_01/24/14 08:37 PM  
_Everyone says hi. like I mean everyone. look, even Charlie’s here. And she doesn’t even live in KS.

[Picture]

_01/24/14 08:55 PM_  
Where are you?

_01/24/14 09:08 PM_  
okay, dude, now you’re just pissing me off. I know you never remember anyone’s birthday but I can’t be turning 36 without my best friend.

_01/24/14 09:35 PM  
_Cas?

*_*_*_*

“Hey, Cas,” Dean called out. He dropped his keys into the bowl by the doorway, pushed up both sleeves of his shirt, and let the door swing closed behind him.

It’d no sooner clicked closed than he felt something cool brush the side of his cheek and a slip of wind around his waist, a hint of pressure against his back that he could barely feel through his flannel and his jeans. He hadn’t heard anyone coming up behind him—no footsteps, no rustle of cloth.

Well, yeah. Of course not. There was nothing to hear. But the suddenness of the touch didn’t make him jump anymore.

He held out his hand, and smiled as a finger (maybe a finger) tickled across his skin. He didn’t close his eyes for this part anymore. It’d been weird, in the beginning, for sure, feeling but not hearing or _seeing_. He was used to it by now, though.

_Hello, Dean_ , Castiel wrote, with the delicate scratch of an invisible fingernail across the flat of Dean’s palm. Dean shivered, and he thought he felt Cas smile back against his cheek. _Good day?_

“Long,” he admitted. “Better now.” At the feel of something wrapping around his waist, he tipped his head back—carefully. He’d almost toppled himself over the first few times Cas hadn’t actually been behind him when he’d done it—it wasn’t like he could always tell where exactly Cas was, especially not this early in the day. He didn’t lean too far back, just enough for the back of his head to rest against _something_ for a moment _,_ before he straightened back up again. The encircling feeling unwrapped from him, but Dean kept one of his own arms outstretched, hand open and fingers spread.

“You turned the lights on,” he noted, smiling. “How come?”

_Shrug_ , Cas wrote, and Dean laughed.

“Weirdo,” he told him, fondly, looking up at the soft glow of the fluorescents. “Oh, hey! You didn’t blow out any bulbs, either! Aww, look’it you.”

At this time of the day, he couldn’t _quite_ hear Cas’s annoyed grunt—it was summer, and even with the apartment windows closed, the sun probably hadn’t sunk under the horizon yet—but he thought he could feel the huff of it against the back of his neck.

“Bet you’d be biting me for that one if you could.” Dean grinned. This time he could definitely feel the huff. “You know, I bet you’re bitey.”

_Don’t make me knock your water glass over!_ That one was written all the way from his elbow to the inside of his wrist, and the exclamation point was a very pokey jab in the center of his palm.

Touchy, touchy.

God, Dean wished he could see him right now. He’d bet Cas was blushing—he remembered that weird way he always had when he was alive, the color starting right on the apples of his cheeks and the hollow of his collarbone, and then with the darker red creeping in to fill the gap between them.

He didn’t say that, though. Cas didn’t blush like that anymore.

Dean reached out, and he fumbled a little bit, but he caught what he thought was the edge of a sleeve brushing against his hand, or maybe the flap of a coat—it felt like lifting a piece of tissue paper. Cas shifted, and at this level that was probably his hip and waist under Dean’s palm. Dean brushed a hand up and down the soft run of almost-nothing happily. “Aw, you wouldn’t do that.”

He looked up at the lights again. “Seriously, though. How’d you manage that? That’s awesome.”

The microwave hadn’t blown up in a couple of months, and Cas could—had—dropped stuff on Dean’s head if the sun wasn’t too high in the sky ( _ow,_ still a sassy asshole). But lights were still really finicky a lot of the time.

Dean bought his bulbs from Costco, these days.

_Practicing_ , Cas wrote across the outside of his wrist.

Dean grinned. “Did _you_ have a good day?”

_Busy. Better now,_ Cas wrote, and Dean turned his hand over to catch Cas’s wrist, bringing it to his mouth to press a kiss into his hand. With Cas this fuzzy still, Dean couldn’t tell if he got the back of his hand or the front or even if it was really a hand at all. But he felt the soft tingling ruffle of the fingers of Cas’s other hand through his hair, like standing in a breeze that was only going for the top of his head.

By the time the chicken tenderloins were breaded and frying, even with the lights on he could _almost_ see Cas’s outline.

“Hey,” Dean complained. “No butts on the kitchen counter.”

The indistinct aqua-blue will o’ the wisp, the size of a basketball with fuzzy edges and maybe the faintest suggestion of broad shoulders underneath, bobbed at him.

“No sass from you, either, I can tell you’re doing it even if I can’t hear you.” He pointed the tongs at the will o’ the wisp, and it drifted off the counter and in his direction, hovering steady at about the level of Dean’s head. If Dean strained hard enough, he thought he could see Cas’s eyes peering back at him from the blobby glow.

“I’m a ghost, Dean,” Cas told him. It wasn’t loud, not this early in the evening—just barely a whisper, only just loud enough to be heard over the sizzle and pop of the frying pan. But it still made a pleasant shiver go down Dean’s back. “I don’t have a butt.”

Dean snorted, and nudged at the glowing blob’s outline with his tongs. Cas didn’t move. “Don’t diss your temporary non-butt. Give it like an hour.”

This time, he was sure Cas was squinting at him with his head tipped to the side. “You just _poked_ me in the nose with your cooking utensil and you’re concerned about my non-butt on the counter?”

Okay, Dean didn’t actually have an answer to that other than to go retrieve his chicken parm from the skillet before the panko breading got too burnt.

He didn’t need to see Cas’s details to know he was smirking, too.

*_*_*_*

**From:**[hana.majdoub@douglascountyks.gov](mailto:hana.majdoub@cookcountyil.gov)  
Wed 01/26/2014 5:14 PM **  
To:** “Dean Winchester” [dwinchester@gmail.com](mailto:dwinchester@gmail.com)  
**Subject:** Obituary

Hi, Dean,

How are you doing? Stupid question, I know. None of us are okay here, either. But we’re hanging in there, and trying to keep busy. I think we’ve got all of Castiel’s clients taken care of. That’s what he’d want done first.

We put together a few words here at the office, and we’re planning to send it to the Tribune tomorrow to go in the Friday paper. I know you didn’t want to write the obituary, but Castiel always said you were the closest thing he has to family, and I wouldn’t feel right sending it in without you seeing it. Would you mind letting me know if there’s anything you want to change?

_Castiel Novak, age 34, passed away on Monday, January 24, 2014. He was born September 18, 1979, in Pontiac, Illinois. He was a diplomate of the Illinois Math and Science Academy, graduated summa cum laude from the University of Chicago, and received his JD from Northwestern University. Castiel was a public defender for the 7 th Judicial Circuit. He loved bees with an unreasonable passion, was instantly recognizable by his lucky coat, and gave every minute he had to making sure everyone got their day in court. He ran the Chicago Marathon every year, had a sense of humor that no-one ever saw coming, and he’d let anyone hug him even though he kind of hated being hugged. He is survived by his friends, his coworkers, and everyone he gave his whole heart to defend. Services will be held at Old St. Patrick’s on January 31, 2014, with funeral to follow at Graceland Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, we will be planting phlox, goldenrod, nasturtiums, and starflower. A law scholarship in Cas’s name is sponsored by his colleagues at the Law Office of the Public Defender._

Let me know what you think. I hope you’re alright. Please know you can come by the office anytime.

Hana

[Read receipt sent on: 01/26/2014, 11:21 PM]

**Received 6 days ago. Reply now?**

*_*_*_*

Dean woke up just after midnight on his thirty-seventh birthday in a hospital bed, so hung over that the world bent over in grey at the corners, with an IV dribbling into his arm and his mouth rancid. He wasn’t even surprised.

He was pretty sure he was still dreaming when he tried to turn over and a cold hand shoved him back down. Luminescent blue eyes— _really_ luminescent, not just the pretty kind that made everyone blink and take a second look at Cas’s face—sparked at him.

Then the machine over Dean’s head flickered and made a pathetic noise as it went out. Some kind of alarm started going off in the hallway.

Nope. Not dreaming. Huh.

“Oh,” Dean mumbled, “Guess I’m dead.” He reached up to put a hand on Cas’s face from where he was leaning over Dean’s bed—lined up that gorgeous cut jawline against his palm, the way he’d never done when Cas was alive, not even when his fingers itched and ached to do it. He smiled, a little shaky. “I’m okay with that. Heya, you.”

His heart ached to see his best friend, and it felt too full and a little too good, ‘cause he’d forgotten how goddamned beautiful Cas was—even in just a year, he’d _forgotten_ , what the fuck.

So Dean was dead. Yeah. Well, okay. He wasn’t scared. They couldn’t’ve picked a better angel to come pick him up.

Then Cas pinched him. And it _hurt_.

“Don’t ‘Heya’ me.” His hands came up into those damned air quotes. “If you ever pull this kind of insanity again, Dean Winchester” Cas told him, straightening to his full height until he seemed to fill the whole room, his crystal glow flaring a little brighter and shadows sprawling behind his shoulders, “I’ll kill you myself.”

Dean gaped. Not dead, then. But if _Dean_ wasn’t dead—

“Wait. Wait, _what?_ ” He looked around, wildly. His toes pushed at the thin, scratchy blanket draped over his legs. “Cas, you can’t be here. How can you be here? You’re—”

“Dead? Yes, I know. I chose to come back as a ghost.” Cas’s eyes, if anything, narrowed further. “I have so many opinions on your recent drinking habits, Dean.”

“You’re a ghost?!” Dean’s voice climbed its way into higher registers like a squirrel escaping from a Doberman. “You _chose_ to be a _ghost_ , and you’ve been _watching me_?!”

“Not in that order.” Cas grimaced. “Please don’t make me repeat it,” he answered, the corners of his mouth dunking downwards as he looked at his hands. His _glowing_ hands. “Even though I’m very vividly aware it’s the truth _,_ it hurts the logical part of my brain.”

“That’s _all_ your brain,” Dean answered, right through the white film of shock coating everything—automatically, the way he always had, his mouth and his voice moving on the autopilot of a decade of friendship.

“ _Exactly_ ,” Cas replied, just as he always did, and Dean forgot, in that second. He forgot it’d been just under a year since they’d buried his best friend—a year since he’d been so fucking _pissed_ that Cas hadn’t shown up at the birthday night Dean was having at the Roadhouse, not even answering his phone when Dean texted—and then called again and again. Finally, Dean had just given up.

He’d been so sure Cas had gotten all tied up in his job again. That case, that nineteen-year-old defendant who’d kept being a little asshole on the stand even though Cas was legitimately sure he wasn’t guilty, had been wrestling Cas into sleepless knots. Cas _agonized_ about his clients, because everyone deserved their day in court. Everyone deserved their _chance_.

Dean had been so sure, at the time, that Cas had gotten a little too involved—or maybe he’d just gone home and passed right the fuck out after they read the verdict. Cas always forgot birthdays anyway, he’d probably completely forgotten about Dean’s birthday party.

Dean had been half right.

“They… they really gave you a choice?” Dean, very carefully, sitting himself back up. He reached out and put a hand on Cas’s shoulder. And it felt like _him_ —the soft rub of the fabric of his trench coat, the way muscle shifted under it because Castiel Novak was _gorgeous_ under his ugly suits, broad shoulders to slim hips. Dean had almost tripped over his own damned toes the first time Cas had, casual as fuck, invited him up to the swimming pool on the roof of his apartment building, and then taken off his shirt. “To… to…”

“Yes, Dean.” Whenever Cas looked at him, it was always this way—like he was seeing under Dean’s skin. Like he liked what he saw there. Like he’d never stop. “After I saw what was… I made a… a deal. I could go on to Heaven, or I could spend the evenings here until it’s time.”

“Time? Time for… what?”

“Some people get a… a special person to share their Heaven with. A soulmate.” Castiel peeked at him through his lashes. “But mine… mine has years and years of life left, and just… I didn’t…” But he looked down at his hands, folded together, and Dean let his fingers fall from Cas’s shoulder. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done this. But I just… I couldn’t abandon _my_ _person_ like that.”

Dean felt his back snap straight, shocked— _abandon?_ What the fuck?! There was no-one in the whole fucking _universe_ who’d ever have thought that Cas had abandoned them. It wasn’t like Cas had _chosen_ to get shot on the fucking courthouse steps!

But Cas wasn’t looking at him, and he kept talking. “I couldn’t let my… my soulmate be so _lonely,_ ” he finished, very softly now.

Yeah. Yeah, that wasn’t even a surprise, was it?

Of course Cas would take that deal for someone he cared about. He’d sign on the dotted line and for once in his lawyerly life he wouldn’t read the fine print. He wouldn’t think twice about it.

‘ _My person_ ,’ he’d said.

But Cas hadn’t ever—he’d never said a single word about—God, who was the lucky bastard? How could Dean not have _known?_

“Oh. I, uh.” Dean swallowed hard. “ _Wow_. Soulmates, huh? So that’s… uh, a real thing?

Cas looked up and through his dark eyelashes. He dipped his chin, shy as fuck.

“Um. That’s… that’s great.”

Cas frowned at him and his head tipped to the side. “You don’t… you don’t look like you think so,” he said, uncertainly, because he’d call Dean on his bullshit when no-one else would.

Goddammit, Dean was such a selfish bastard. It was so fucking stupid that Cas’s little soulmate mic drop hurt more than his headache—more than the twisting in his gut, more than the bruises that made Dean realize he’d probably gotten into a fight or fallen or something in that blurry, alcohol-stained period of last night he couldn’t remember.

Here was Dean’s clue trout: this was why Cas never used to date, not ever. In the ten years that Dean had known him, Cas had never been interested in romantic relationships, or in sex, and he’d never seen the guy so much as _holding hands_ with anyone.

As he looked up at Cas, lighting up the room with a soft pastel glow and wearing a tiny, shy, shaky little smile, Dean realized maybe he should have thought more about that. But he hadn’t, because Cas not dating meant he had Cas to himself.

And now, Cas was… he was here again. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else. Not even the fact that he looked so familiar, so fucking _adorable_ with his head cocked like that and his eyes hopeful and just a little squinty, that it flipped Dean’s stomach.

Not even the fact that someone else would get to have him now.

“No, no, I mean it! That is… that’s really great, Cas. Um… who… is it?” Dean finally managed to wrestle out through the selfish knot in his throat. He fisted his hands in the hospital sheets to keep from reaching out and running his hand through Cas’s hair. Cas wasn’t his to touch. “Can I… do you need my help? Can I help you find her?”

_God. She’s lucky. She’s so lucky. She’d better deserve you._

Castiel stared at him.

Then muttered, “Oh. You really _are_ an assbutt.”

*_*_*_*

_01/24/15 10:12 AM  
[Bitch]  
Happy birthday, Dean. I know we haven’t talked in kind of a while. It’s been a really tough year.  
~~Ellen said you’ve~~  
~~I know you’ve been drinking a lot, but  
~~ ~~We’re all really worried about you~~  
I get why you’re not answering your phone. You’re probably not going to want to celebrate, but maybe you could just come over? Please?  
You’re my big brother, and I love you. I don’t want you to be alone, not today._

_01/24/15 06:19 PM  
[Jerk]_

_…  
…  
…  
…  
im fine Sammy_

*_*_*_*

“How’s Sam doing?” Cas asked, nudging his thigh against Dean’s. He was Cas-shaped, Cas-sized now; Dean could still see the arm of the sofa through him, but only a little. _Voyager_ played low in the background— _yes_ they were watching fucking Voyager in 2017, what was wrong with that?—as Dean’s knife crunched softly through the next bite of his dinner. “He hasn’t been over in a few weeks.”

Dean chuckled, and bumped his shoulder against Cas’s in a quick run of pressure, kind of like pushing into a pillow. “Aw, you know he’s got a new girl. Eileen. I’ll invite ‘em over to dinner.”

“Is she better than the last one? I didn’t really like _her_ much,” Cas said, quellingly.

Dean snickered. “Yeah, I _know_ , buddy, she couldn’t figure out why the heck she kept dropping a utensil every time she made some kind of passive-aggressive comment at Sam.” And considering that _Dean_ had been the only one who could see Cas standing by Amelia’s chair and glaring, flicking her knife or fork away from her every time she low-key bitched out Dean’s little brother, that dinner had been a lot more interesting for him than anyone else.

Cas hunched in a little. “That was petty of me,” he admitted.

Dean laughed, his mouth full. “Are you kidding? It was funny as _hell_.”

Dean couldn’t _blame_ Sam for being mad for a long while after Dean finally kind of lost it. Laughing at Sam’s girlfriend being a klutz, since Sammy had no idea about Cas, was rude even for _Dean…_ even if it had been really fucking funny. But geez, the least the Samsquatch could do was give Dean some credit—at least he’d gone into the bathroom when he realized it was either laugh or throw up from trying to swallow his laughter.

Seriously, how was he supposed to _not_ laugh when a spoonful of ice cream did a full 180 somersault and catapulted the blob onto Amelia’s nose? Besides, what could Dean say? ‘Fuck, that was _impressive_ aim?’

Cas growling out from the living room, “Dean, we can still _hear you!_ ” while Dean was sitting on the toilet whooping and cackling definitely hadn’t helped.

“You shouldn’t encourage such behavior,” Cas muttered, but he let his body tilt until his side was resting against Dean’s arm, and his head was on Dean’s shoulder. His hair didn’t feel like hair yet; it felt kind of like static electricity against the side of Dean’s neck. Dean smiled at the prickle of it.

Dean didn’t even care that having Cas’s head on his shoulder like this was making it kind of difficult for him to finish his dinner without someone putting a body part _through_ someone. It wasn’t like Cas had any weight—not yet, he wouldn’t for a few hours—but that didn’t mean Dean wanted to poke him with his elbow or something. Cas was mostly solid by now, so a touch wouldn’t go through him, but if Dean pressed too hard it might at least go _into_ him, which felt all kinds of weird.

They watched TV together, quietly, for a little while longer, and when Dean looked over again, Cas’s hair was solid enough to tickle his cheek. Dean pushed a kiss into his hairline, and Cas stirred against him with a soft, contented sigh. This time, he had breath—cool as an air-conditioning unit turning on, a pleasant run of goosebumps up Dean’s shoulder. Dean tilted his head over and nuzzled him, feeling the sparking rasp of Cas’s scruff against his own. Definitely past midnight, then.

Cas’s hand settled on Dean’s knee. He rubbed. “I’d like to touch you tonight. May I?”

Dean blinked. “Oh _hell_ yes.” Even if it meant Dean was gonna get no sleep _at all_ he wouldn’t have said no to that. He swung himself over, carefully perching on Cas’s lap and settling down when it was obvious Cas was solid enough. He put his hands down on Cas’s shoulders and ran a knuckle up and down the side of Cas’s neck—by now, Dean could feel the texture of his skin, the soft rub of his suit jacket.

When Cas had died, he’d had nicer suits than this. Nicer ties. Nicer coats, calf-length and black and actually kind of sexy. But he always appeared in _this_ suit—the first one Dean had ever seen him in, kind of wrinkled, a little too big. He always appeared in his lucky coat, the ugly boxy brown one he used to wear on the days he gave closing arguments.

Cas smiled up at him, and there was never gonna be a day that sight didn’t make Dean’s life a little bit brighter, ghost or not. “Thank you.”

“Stupid. What’re you thanking me for?” Dean asked him fondly. He leaned over to gently bite at the crease where Cas’s jaw met his neck and regretted that he couldn’t leave any hickeys. He’d have loved that, to see Cas marked up by him. “I don’t know how I ever thought you were, you know. Not interested in that kind of thing,” he chuckled.

His lips prickled where they met Cas’s faint glow still, but there was a glistening wet stripe left behind where Dean had licked, so Dean _knew_ Cas was all the way substantial, now. Otherwise, Dean couldn’t have even left _that_ on him.

“I wasn’t.” Cas moved both shoulders in a small shrug, almost dislodging him. “I tried it, but it was never very… appealing.” He wrinkled his nose. “It was just… messy. And complicated. It never seemed worth the bother. And then I met you.” His lips tilted up again in Dean’s favorite smile—the one that started in the corners of his eyes and just barely curved his mouth. “I realized something had gone very awry the first time I thought of licking your freckles.”

Awry, _hah_. “Not sure I’m into you licking my face,” Dean admitted, sitting back and chuckling. Trust Cas to have some kind of weird fetish. “But we can try it, if you wanna.”

Cas’s finger skimmed his ear, his neck, his collarbone, tickled underneath the collar of his shirt. He tugged enough that the cloth stretched over Dean’s shoulder, and dropped a tingling kiss to the curve of it. “Not _those_ freckles, Dean.”

_Oh_.

Dean shifted. He was already aching in his pants, just from one question and a damned kiss on his shoulder. Goddammit, he had it so bad. “Am I heavy?”

Cas shook his head. “I can feel you, but it feels… good. Warm. Real. Maybe, at some point, I could try to pick you up.” His hands settled on the backs of Dean’s hips and rubbed in a slow circle, then continued down to grip his thighs.

_Mmmm_. Dean rocked a little closer on Cas’s lap. Okay, that hadn’t occurred to him, but that was… kind of hot, actually.

Cas looked thoughtful. Maybe thoughtful. But his eyes weren’t smiling anymore. “I am fairly sure I couldn’t have carried you when I was alive.”

Dean ran a finger down the dark trail of Cas’s hairline, drew an arc around one of his ears. Where’d his head gone to? “Yeah, I’d’ve ended up on my ass.” Dean smiled down at him, looking for the answering smile in those blue eyes. “But hey, we get to try it now, right?”

“We wasted so much time,” Cas sighed. His voice was still deep—his voice had always rumbled and gritted in that way that had turned Dean’s knees to water, but now there was always just a little bit of an echo to it. His hands tightened. “I should’ve—”

“Hey. Enough of that,” Dean told him, and reached out to push his fingers into the knot of Cas’s tie.

Cas wasn’t the only one who ‘should’ve.’ Dean knew that.

Fuck, he knew that better than anyone _._

*_*_*_*

_‘No one has ever done so much for our family.’  
Douglas County Public Defender Dies Defending Client_

_By Alicia Lopez  
January 25, 2014_

_Castiel Novak, a Douglas County public defender, was shot to death on the front steps of the 7 th District Circuit Court last night._

_Novak, Novak’s client Jerome Greer, and Greer’s mother were leaving the courthouse when Kryszsztof Zygman emerged from the crowd armed with a Glock 19. Witnesses report that Novak immediately moved to shield his client._

_“Mr. Novak saw the gun and just jumped in front of Jerome and Taria,” said the Rev. Clay Evans of Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church. Rev. Evans was present at the courthouse in support of Greer, 19. “No-one else could move.”_

_Zygman fired twelve rounds. Eleven struck Novak in the chest and torso. He was pronounced dead by paramedics on scene. Greer and his mother were unharmed._

_Just hours before, a jury had pronounced Greer innocent of the second degree murder of Flora Zygman, 27, a homemaker from Midland. Her husband, Kryszsztof, 35, had left the courtroom when the verdict was pronounced._

_Douglas County First Assistant Public Defender Castiel Novak, 34, was known throughout the Seventh Circuit for three things: his long beige trench coat, his riveting closing arguments, and his zealous defense of even the most difficult clients._

_The recent case was no exception: Greer had been escorted from the courtroom for contempt of court no fewer than three times over the course of the months-long trial…_

*_*_*_*

In the beginning, Dean held back because of that voice in the back of his head that told him he wasn’t into guys—not even, maybe _especially_ not, nerdy little guys with eyes blue enough to drown the Pacific, surprisingly broad shoulders and big, ugly trench coats.

Not even the one whose ancient Jubilee-gold Continental Mark V was propped on the shoulder after a long skid one evening, the fellow leaning against the door and hunched over with his hands on his knees, cellphone clutched open in one hand.

Castiel—he wasn’t ‘Cas’ yet, then—looked up, so pathetically _grateful_ when Dean pulled up behind him in his Impala, alarmed by the skid he’d watched happening in the distance. He could see that the guy’s face had no color even from down the road. Dean still remembered thinking that he looked kind of like a bird that’d fallen _plop_ out of the nest: hair in all directions from wind and fingers, scruff jet-dark against where he was still sorta shaky and white around the edges, blue eyes wide and lips pale.

He looked so small all curled in on himself that Dean was surprised when he straightened up, pushing himself upright with a hand on the Pimpmobile. He was nearly Dean’s height.

Dean couldn’t blame the guy, for freaking out, not really—it _was_ really fucking scary to go for the brakes and feel the pedal go for the floor rather than catch. Even if it was just for a second. At least the guy had had the sense to pull over and cruise to a stop, not keep driving.

Dean was a mechanic, and he was a really fucking good one. But he was also pretty sure that he’d never had a customer look at him with such _wonder_ as Castiel Novak did when Dean snipped the end of his leaky brake line where it’d cracked right up against the rear tire, tucked it back against the nipple, and zip-tied the whole thing together.

“That’s _amazing_ ,” Castiel told him, the wide eyes and the parted lips making him look ten years younger, and adorable as puppies.

To this day, Dean didn’t even know why he fucking _blushed_.

Yeah, Dean gave the guy hell for it when he found out that he’d kind of been driving with half-mushy brakes for a few weeks— _no,_ that wasn’t normal, even with ‘classic’ cars! And then _Dean_ got hell from Bobby when they both cruised back into the shop a half hour after it was supposed to have closed up for the day. But the jury-rig had worked, hadn’t it? And saved the poor guy the cost of a tow.

Castiel took them all out that night for dinner at a really nice place—all seven of them, from Ellen, manning the desk, to Garth, cleaning up oil pans in the back, and even Bobby, giving Cas’s suit and tie a suspicious look. Castiel Novak, JD, did not seem to give two shits that the girl at the fancy check-in desk gave everyone’s t-shirts and flannels and torn jeans the stink-eye.

“Cas,” Dean laughed, elbowing him, loose with beer and good food as he watched Jo threaten Ash with a steak knife. “You got conned, man, this-all is gonna cost you a _lot_ more than a tow would’ve.” He didn’t mention that they’d only charged Cas for parts, not labor.

“Well.” Cas considered that, then lifted his beer in Dean’s direction, clinking it gently against the neck of Dean’s bottle. “You have given me a nickname, and I haven’t had one since I was a child,” Cas told him, so shyly that Dean blinked. “I consider that well worth the cost.”

Dean was pretty sure he’d never had anyone try to light him on fire with their eyeballs the way Cas did later that night when Dean told him his car wasn’t classic; it was crappy. What the hell was a lawyer doing driving that piece of shit anyway? Dean didn’t _like_ Sam’s Prius, but at least he could be pretty sure parts weren’t ever gonna just fall off it.

“I’m a public defender just out of law school, Dean,” Cas told him, with a soft huff, all puffed-up like an angry little bluejay. “I’m going to be paying off my student loans until I’m fifty.”

Dean didn’t say anything then. Not even when he got the truly bizarre urge to reach out, grab Cas by both ears, and kiss all that puff out of his warm, pink pout of a mouth.

Yeah, _especially_ not then.

Later, he’d held back because, well, there was time to figure stuff out. Who had time for feelings when there were dinners and movie nights—Cas always burned the popcorn, _how_ did he always burn the popcorn?—with a thousand missed references because Cas had been raised sometime in the Middle Ages and had never left them.

Maybe a million glances, the kind that even Sam commented on.

Dean remembered what he’d said, too, when Sam was being an asshole about it: “What’s wrong with us having a couple of inside jokes?”

Sam snorted. “Dean, you asked him ‘what color,’ he said ‘heather gray,’ and you _laughed_. He says ‘assbutt’ and you know exactly what he means by that even though that expression makes no _sense_. That’s not an inside joke, that’s a whole _different language_ — _ow!_ ”

(Sam’s ears were still really sensitive to being flicked.)

But it _wasn’t_ weird that Cas came with him to family dinners. To Sam’s graduations, _plural_ , because, yeah, Sam. To their dad’s funeral. Just to hang out on Dean’s couch with case files spread around him and ink on his face because he chewed on the back of his pen sometimes. To have a drink with the guys even though when Garth was drunk he kept trying to hug everyone.

No-one blinked at Cas’s law office when Dean came around—when he wrote the birthdays of Cas’s paralegals and his officemates into Cas’s planner, because Cas was the smartest guy he’d ever met, but he couldn’t remember anyone’s fucking birthday. Dean was the only one around who knew that Cas’s ultra-religious family had kicked him out when he was nineteen because, in true Cas form, he’d refused to pretend his big sister didn’t exist after she ran away. Dean took the day off on cases he knew Cas wasn’t feeling good about so he could sit in the back of the courtroom and just send good vibes his best friend’s way.

It just didn’t seem weird at all.

Then, with a vengeance, came the wet dreams like Dean was a fucking adolescent all over again. Maybe in some ways he _was,_ ‘cause sure as shit he’d never had dreams like this about a _guy_ before _._

Dean called the first one a fluke, wiping the sweat off his face and glaring suspiciously at the tent in his blankets.

He really should have known better than to challenge the universe like that.

After the tenth time Dean dreamed of dark scruff scraping against his thighs or a careful, graceful hand holding their cocks together, or, Jesus Christ, his own _mouth_ stretched around a cock and glancing up to find himself meeting shocked blue eyes, he really couldn’t deny that his body wanted whatever the fuck it wanted. But that didn’t mean it was gonna _get. Especially_ not after he woke up on his belly with wet boxers and his whole body still shaky and electric and all but _tingling_ with the remnants of the dream, Cas easing into his ass slow and careful—holy _shit_.

Yeah, no, no, _no_. One, it was _creepy_ in the first place to hit on your best friend. And B, Cas didn’t do relationships _or_ sex, never had the entire time Dean had known him, and what was Dean supposed to say to the guy anyway? “Oh, by the way, we’ve been friends awhile, I only like girls and you don’t like _anyone,_ but you wanna try fucking?”

Yeah, that’d go really freakin’ swimmingly.

Well, whatever, they were good with what they had. There was gonna be time to figure this out. There was always gonna be time.

Until there wasn’t.

Such a hero, they said, the lawyer who dove in front of his nineteen-year-old client.

An angel, the kid’s mom called Cas at his funeral, sobbing, her son white-lipped at her side. The kid was wearing the same suit he’d worn throughout the trial—the same one he’d wiped his nose and dried his tears on when the jury pronounced him ‘not guilty.’

Sam’s hand on Dean’s shoulder was the only thing keeping him vertical as he looked down onto that nice, fancy wood coffin they hadn’t even had to spring for because Cas—organized, fucking organized _Cas—_ had a life insurance policy. The words of Dean’s speech were all crumpled in his pocket. He hadn’t been able to read them.

Dean knew then exactly how he felt about Cas. How he’d felt for years. He _knew._

Knowing didn’t make it better, though. Working until his fingers bled didn’t make it better. Drinking until the blackouts crept in on the edges of his daytime vision didn’t make it better.

Nothing did. He was starting to believe that nothing would.

*_*_*_*

“ _Hey, you called Sam, but he can’t talk right now because he’s waxing. Like, everything. But I will leave—”  
“Dean, what are you doing with my phone?! Dean, come on—”_

_[First unheard message.]_

“Sammy… hey. It’s me. Look, I, uh, sorry we haven’t talked much. It’s been… uh… something’s… um. Anyway. Thanks for the birthday wishes. You’re right, things have been pretty shitty, but I’m okay. I really am. Everything’s gonna be fine. I promise. And don’t make that face, you know I keep my promises, bitch. I’ll call you later.”

_[Message left on January 25, 2015, 9:04 AM. Press 7 to delete this message. Press 9 to save. Press 1 for more options.]_

*_*_*_*

Dean turned the lights off as they were making their way towards the bedroom, kissing slow and shedding clothes. Or, well, Dean was shedding clothes. He was peeling clothes off Cas, piece by familiar piece, but he didn’t have to look behind himself to know that after he dropped them on the floor, they wouldn’t be there anymore. Cas’s all-over soft, almost white-blue glow was getting darker already as Dean ran his hands up the bare, cool skin of his chest, starting to deepen from white to aqua to purple as Dean thumbed over his nipple.

“You’re like the most awesome lava lamp in the world,” Dean told him, gleefully, using one of Cas’s shoulders for balance as he toed out of his jeans.

Cas squinted at him. “I really wish you wouldn’t describe my grace that way.”

Hah! “Are you kidding?” Dean kissed the side of Cas’s neck and started on the buttons of those familiar black slacks while he was still towing him towards the bedroom. He could almost see Cas’s soft pastel purple already trying to shade to pink. The glow wrapped around his fingertips and tingled just under his skin when he put his hand flat on Cas’s chest. “You were always so damned poker-faced, even when you were alive. If you go mood ring now and again, I’m not complaining.”

“Are you planning to compare me to any other trendy bits of seventies paraphernalia?” Cas demanded, archly. For just a second, his halo—grace— _whatever—_ flared an embarrassed orange before transforming back to purple.

Dean paused and looked back up, one hand still fumbling the zipper of Cas’s slacks. “Wait. How do you know about seventies paraphernalia? You don’t even know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek!”

“I’m a _spirit_ , Dean,” Cas shot back. “Other than when I’m with you, time doesn’t really have much meaning anymore. I can see most of human history.”

Oh, sometimes Cas just made it _so easy._ Dean grinned. “Well, guess that at least makes you more useful than a pet rock, so—”

Dean would admit, he kind of deserved being toppled backwards onto the bed for that one.

But Cas must’ve been impatient, because he normally _undressed_ rather than just disappearing the rest of his clothes. Yup, maybe Dean did have a couple of screws sideways, but Cas doing that, Cas _wanting_ this so much, got Dean hard enough that he had to dig his nails into the top of his own thigh to keep from launching right back off the mattress.

Cas stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at him. He was glowing rosy all over now—literally glowing, like that gorgeous blush of his suspended a millimeter over his skin. It covered him full-body from head to toe, and right now, it was bright enough to cast a shadow.

Dean wasn’t kidding when he said he kind of loved it: Cas was shining enough that in his own pink light, Dean got a full-body, toothsome view of him—shoulders that Cas always held just a little hunched forward, lean chest, a deep V of thigh and groin just made for a tongue, cock smooth and tightly erect, not too big.

All of it looked even _better_ for not coming with a six-pack and a perfect bod, because it was just… Cas. Tinted pink as a crayon, yeah, but so damned much _Cas_.

Then Cas _fidgeted,_ folding his fingers shyly. God. Sometimes Dean didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or just lean over and _bite_ him.

He settled for gesturing impatiently, grinning. “Get your ass over here, sweetheart.”

He had no idea how to describe getting touched by Cas to anyone. Well, not that he would have tried, but hell, he had no idea how to describe it to _himself_. This late at night, the glide of his hand felt mostly the same texture as normal skin, Cas’s old pen-calluses and all, but it was chilly and just… _more._ It was always more.

Dean didn’t even know if the mix of tingling and pressure and coolness would’ve felt good in any other situation. More than once, if they started too early in the evening, he saw Cas’s hand disappearing _into_ him, their outlines overlapping. That felt a little weird for sure, shaky and bright like there was cold draft beer running through his muscles and his veins, but Cas’s glow flared brighter wherever their skin blurred together—so that probably felt kind of nice for him, and Dean never complained.

Tingling, sparkling, or whatever the fuck he was, this was still _Cas_ lying beside Dean, on top of him; Cas’s fierce, intense eyes, Cas’s fucking _voice._ When Dean looked down, it was Cas’s shoulders being gripped under his fingers, Cas’s big hand wrapped around his cock—like Dean had fantasized about so, so many times over the past decade.

Yeah, Cas was glowing—he never really stopped glowing—but that just meant Dean got all the details even with the lights completely off: how long his fingers were, the fucking _delicate_ arc of his wrists, the way Cas watched him throughout. Dean got completely lost in the way Cas kept his hand loose at first, just running the pads of his fingers up and over the head of him and all the way back down to Dean’s base over and over until his fingers were all wet with Dean’s precome.

Castiel Novak was a goddamned _tease_ —had Dean seen that one coming? No, he really had not.

Dean was already rocking into it, both legs bent and feet planted, by the time Cas tightened his fingers into the kind of warm, silky cuff and the kind of deliberate, rhythmic _pace_ that had Dean gasping and arching off the bed, pressing up into him.

(Yeah, Cas had watched him jacking off a couple of times—too early in the day for them to be able to touch in more than a pinpoint. Embarrassing, maybe, if Dean thought about it for too long, but at the time, seeing the faint shadow of Cas at the foot of the bed, openmouthed and eyes wide and shining, had just been _hot_. And at moments like this? Nothing seemed embarrassing _at all_.)

“Today, can we…?” Cas asked, and his hand eased backwards, palm tucking between Dean’s legs to rest behind his balls, a nippy finger brushing against Dean’s hole and, oh, God, Cas almost never asked for that. Dean grabbed at him, but it wasn’t to stop him—it was to hold, to _grip_ , feeling Cas’s forearms flex under his own scarred, callused hands, just so he didn’t come all over himself just a little too early.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, of course.”

Dean fumbled in his drawer for the bottle. They didn’t actually need lube—Dean had figured that out the first time Cas had touched him back there. But it was kind of fun to get all wet and messy sometimes, and Cas seemed like he was in the mood to play around a bit. He’d said he wanted to touch, hadn’t he? Cas even chuckled when Dean rolled over and got onto his elbows and knees. When those big hands molded against the firm curves of Dean’s hips, Dean pressed eagerly back into them.

“So lovely,” Cas sighed, squeezing Dean’s ass between his hands, and Dean felt him drop a kiss to either cheek before two fingers slid right in between, cold and slender and slippery. Dean’s hole didn’t quite know what to do with the temperature of them for a second, tightening up—it was always that way, whether or not they used any lube. Cas wasn’t an ice cube or anything; he just wasn’t ever _warm_. But Dean pushed through it and felt the beginning of those champagne tingles lighting him up from inside as Cas’s fingers moved inside him—oh fuck. Fuck. “Like this…?”

“Yeah, yeah, s’good,” Dean panted, and pressed himself backwards. He shuddered when Cas—careful as ever—rubbed with his fingertips in a slow, rhythmic stroke. He didn’t pull them out again, just kept drawing those tiny circling hints of motion inside Dean’s ass, little rings right around his sweet spot but not directly on it, ‘cause again—Cas was a goddamned tease.

The fizzy pressure of it was starting to feel pretty nice—and then, as Cas leaned over Dean to get a better angle, _very_ nice. Dean shivered as Cas tipped the bottle and let some of the lube trickle down his taint, then on down the inside of his thigh. Cas followed the trip it was taking carefully, slowly, with one of the fingers of his other hand.

“Hmmm,” Cas murmured, thoughtfully, and leaned over to scoop up the bottle again.

Dean knew _that_ tone.

Cas didn’t say anything else—neither of them did—but he sure as heck wasn’t stopping. Dean was panting and clutching at the pillow under his head with both hands, and by the time Cas was three fingers in, the lube was just about everywhere. Dean could hear the sloppy noise of it every time Cas flexed his fingers, or even when he spread them and added more.

“What’re you doing?” Dean finally asked, hazily, caught in a weird halfway between drifting and fucking _lighting up_ like a Christmas tree.

“I think… oh. How does this feel?” To Dean’s surprise, Cas pulled his fingers all the way out.

Well, how was it supposed to feel? Empty, mostly. Dean frowned in confusion. Then there was—what was—

The strange, rolling drip of _something,_ trickling out of his pucker, made its way cool and slippery down the midline stripe of his perineum. The little rivulet, parting like a wave breaking on the back of his balls, made Dean’s thighs lock up. In the back of his mind, he knew it was lube—well, of course—but there was so _much_ of it, oh, shit… he was dripping like Cas had somehow come inside him.

“Oh my God, _Cas,_ ” he choked out, and reached down underneath himself to grab the base of his cock hard so he didn’t just come on the spot. Oh _goddamn_. Asexual, Dean’s fine, fucked ass.

“You like that?” Cas asked, sounding _very_ pleased with himself, the kinky sonofabitch. Dean almost faceplanted into the bed at the feel of two fingers tracing the path the lube had taken, tracing along his sensitive rim as gently as a tongue. Cas’s hand ended up cupping his balls and rubbing a thumb back and forth just behind them like he was trying to ease Dean down.

Yeah, no, this was definitely doing the exact opposite of easing Dean down.

“If you don’t get in me now, I’m gonna come, sweetheart,” he grunted, lifting himself a little further off the bed so he didn’t try to grind against the mattress.

“Would that be bad?” That innocence was fake. It was a hundred percent fake.

“ _Cas_ ,” Dean complained, glaring over his shoulder, and his own tone was split halfway between a laugh and a whine. Cas’s downright delighted look back at him could’ve lit up an apartment block, and the light splashing across the sheets was the color of ripe cherries. Jesus, he _was_ in a playful mood, and Dean was right here for it, but what the hell, a man could only take so much.

Cas’s hands were dry again when they cupped Dean’s hips and felt up his ass with little rolling motions of his palms; Dean let his legs come just a little apart and dropped his head and shoulders. Oh thank God.

Dean had no idea how getting fucked by a ghost felt for anyone else (and yes, it _was_ his life that he could say that and mean it completely literally). But he could honestly say that it had never once hurt—not even the way his own fingers burned when he tried them out inside himself, just to see how it’d feel. It felt _weird,_ sure, still strange and cold and too-full, and the first time Cas had pressed into him Dean had slid himself backwards on the mattress because his body couldn’t quite figure out if it wanted to open into the cool pressure or try to get away.

But then Cas had moaned on top of him, eyes wide and expression lost when he’d whispered, “Oh, _Dean_ ,” with a hand resting on the bed, the other curved around Dean’s left shoulder in a touch that almost felt _warm_ again. Dean would’ve run naked and barefoot through Hell to make Cas’s deep, raspy voice sound like that again, to put that _wonder_ back on his face.

With the way Cas was molded over him today, though, the faint electricity of his glow had already started zipping up the back of Dean’s thighs, where they were slotted together. The cool prickle of it made Dean’s muscles quiver as it made its way up, up—Cas eased past that first ring of tightness, so slow, that fucking fantastic, zinging stretch.

That first time, Dean had come with a shocked yelp just a few strokes in, and he hadn’t even realized he was _close—_ which was goddamned _embarrassing_. He’d gotten better at that, but it was still a lot, every time. Not just Cas’s blue eyes watching him like he was seeing a miracle or the grip of an unmistakably male hand on Dean’s shoulder, his waist, his sides—not even the rough, strange fizz of Cas’s aura, the sweet, achy fullness inside Dean’s body that was still unfamiliar. It was just…

It seemed so fucking hokey to say ‘connection,’ but that was exactly what it was. It was Cas moving inside him, them being _joined_ , so close that at times Dean really, honestly couldn’t tell where one of them left off and the other began. In their case, sometimes that was a metaphor and sometimes, well… not.

Maybe _this_ was what the whole soulmates thing was supposed to be about.

Cas didn’t need to ask him if he was okay, ‘cause Dean was already telling him not to stop. “Hurry, sweetheart, c’mon,” he growled, and rocked his hips back into it, getting himself opened up just a little further on Cas’s cock.

Cas didn’t pull back, but he also didn’t shove the rest of the way in. “But I like going slow,” Cas told him, and he was definitely sounding very satisfied with himself.

Dean groaned. Yup, Cas was _definitely_ in a mood.

It wasn’t _too_ slow—it wasn’t slow enough that Dean could relax himself off the edge of feeling like his cock was going to poke a hole right through the mattress. But it was slow enough that he couldn’t even catch the rhythm of Cas rocking carefully in and out of him. Every time he tried to jerk his hips backwards to sit back onto Cas’s cock, get him in just a little faster or a little deeper or a little more _something_ , it was like Cas was just on the verge of pulling back, or pausing, or maybe just out to drive Dean the fuck out of his mind.

“Dean,” Cas said, with that very damned literal eternal patience of his. He sounded like he was smiling.

Dean grumbled. There was definitely something fucking wrong with him, because he wanted to fuck himself back against his best friend’s cock and at the same time roll around in that smug-sounding smile of his like a big pile of autumn leaves. But then Cas leaned forward and carefully draped himself all the way over Dean’s back. Which, sure, pushed his cock really nicely in and in and _in,_ more than Dean had gotten before, and he breathed into it with his eyelids fluttering at how intense and how _good_ that felt.

Cas strung himself out on top of Dean’s back, blanketed him—and he wasn’t heavy or anything; he never was, even though he should have been, but Dean couldn’t deny he was _there,_ cool and solid _._ One of Cas’s hands was gripping Dean’s hip, and the other was curled in Dean’s hair, and there really should have been no way for him to keep his balance like that without flattening Dean completely to the mattress.

Dean’s brain, as usual, skittered over that knowledge and came back empty, but empty was a really good place for it right now, as Cas started to roll his hips, slow and deliberate, over and over. His breath was just as rhythmic as his thrusts—little October gusts against the back of Dean’s shoulder. Dean groaned when he felt Cas mouthing at the tight skin between his shoulder blades; louder, when he tried to squirm around to get Cas rubbing right where he wanted him inside, and Cas—very gently—tugged his hair.

If that was supposed to encourage Dean to stop, it was really fucking ineffective.

Cas barely made any noise while they were having sex—Dean was pretty sure he was never gonna get a single word of dirty talk out of him—but with all the lube in Dean, the sounds of them fucking were unexpectedly, shockingly loud throughout the room, filthy and noisy even over Dean’s grunts. The trickle of wet down his perineum was _warm_ now, even though Cas’s cock was as cold as ever stretching his rim open. Temperature play had never been his thing before, but Dean had the crazy, dizzy feeling that Cas might’ve just changed his mind about that, oh _goddamn_.

It never felt anything like Dean had imagined getting fucked up the ass would feel, nothing like he’d ever even dreamed, and Dean could damned well make enough noise for the both of them as his body fluttered and clenched _hard_ around the cold pressure inside him.

“Harder, Cas…” he gasped. “C’mon, sweetheart, little… little bit—”

Cas must’ve spread his legs a little further, dropped down a little wider, done a little something _more_ even though he was spread out all across Dean’s back, ‘cause he was deep enough that Dean could almost swallow and feel him, splitting him wide open. Cas was surrounding him and in him, so deep that no-one would ever get him out.

Dean was breaking open—sweating and chilled, pressed down and holding himself up, Cas’s cock rubbing across his prostate like electricity and the feel of him kissing Dean’s neck, his back, his shoulder blades. It was too much—it was always too damned much—and Dean was always the one who begged for this, but this time Cas had offered.

When Dean came bucking across the sheets, spilling wet and completely damned untouched, it was with this running delirious through his head: _I’ve got you, Cas, and you’ve got me_. The room was lit scarlet like the inside of a volcano, or maybe that was just the inside of Dean’s eyelids, his eyes squeezed shut against how Cas was glowing so brightly behind him that the color washed under his eyelashes.

Dean wasn’t ashamed to admit his face might be a little wet when he lowered himself, panting, the rest of the way to his stomach, then rolled over eagerly so he could gather up his sweet guy and tumble him to the mattress.

(Cas was the one who’d cried their first time, after all.)

*_*_*_*

_“This is Castiel Novak. Please leave your message. I will return it in a timely fashion, and if you are a telemarketer, you will never see me coming.”_

_“This is Castiel Novak. Please leave your message. I will return it in a timely fashion, and if you are a telemarketer, you will never see me coming.”_

_“This is Castiel Novak. Please leave your message. I will return it in a timely fashion, and if you are a telemarketer, you will never see me coming.”_

_“This is Castiel Novak—"_

_[The number you have dialed is not in service.]_

*_*_*_*

“We’re _soulmates?_ ” Dean pointed back and forth between them with a shaky finger—the alcoholic mechanic in a hospital gown that was too short for him, and the dead lawyer in an ugly trench coat and crooked tie. “ _Us_? Is that what you’re sayin’ here, Cas?”

Cas fidgeted. “Yes.”

“Oh.” Holy shit. Dean had _so many_ questions. “And that’s why you’re… you’re…”

What even _was_ he? The nurse who’d come in to check on Dean’s machines hadn’t _seen_ Cas. Hadn’t even looked in his direction. Cas had been standing fucking literally next to her and looking over her shoulder with interest as she’d pulled up Dean’s gown—Dean had squawked—and checked all the wires of the little leads stuck to Dean’s chest.

For a hot second there, Dean had thought Cas might be checking out his chest. But that couldn’t be right.

Then the nurse had wished Dean a good night and left, closing the door, all without glancing once at the little lawyer that was glowing by Dean’s bedside.

So… _not_ a ghost? A personal ghost? Was Dean Whitney Houston in this scenario?

Dean’s mental Impala changed lanes with a screech. “That’s why you’re… here?” he finished.

Cas bobbed his chin like a bird again, and the way he was opening his mouth and closing it a little, like he was trying to look for words, wasn’t exactly helping that impression. Finally, he decided on, “Is that… is that okay?”

“Dude,” Dean breathed, and reached out to grab Cas’s shoulder, squeezing tight. “That’s _awesome._ ”

Cas yipped as Dean hauled him sprawling onto the hospital bed, and not even tangling with that coat of his kept Dean from dragging Cas up his body to kiss him.

Cas wasn’t a good kisser. Huh. He didn’t know what to do with his lips. He sure as hell didn’t know what to do with his tongue. He kept his mouth closed, even when Dean carefully pressed the tip of his tongue against that soft seam.

But that was okay. Dean would be _very_ happy to teach him.

If he wanted to learn. Oh, shit. Wait. Maybe that was why he wasn’t moving. Dean jerked his head back against the thin pillow behind him and stopped slobbering all over his best friend. He’d _assumed_ —but why—that wasn’t—just ‘cause Cas was a _ghost_ or whatever he was, didn’t mean he’d be okay with Dean manhandling him.

What the fuck had made Dean think that Cas wanted to be kissed any more _after_ he was dead than before?

Okay, this was all really goddamned confusing.

Cas didn’t move off Dean, though. He sort of flopped onto Dean’s chest, glowing, looking big-eyed and startled as a bunny, but he didn’t look mad or grossed out, so that was something.

“Oh.” Cas said, shyly. “I… I didn’t think you’d want to do that. I like it.” His eyes dropped to Dean’s mouth, and he actually licked his lips. Eagerly. Oh, holy shit. Thank God. Dean really meant that, _thank God._ “Can we do that some more?”

Dean blinked at him through the hot wash of relief. “Uh… why _wouldn’t_ I want to kiss you?” Dean fucking loved kissing, he always had; it was Cas who’d always made a little face whenever people started trying to count their partners’ tonsils in public. Cas wasn’t judging the PDA—even though his expression sometimes came off that way, Dean knew better—but he’d told Dean he couldn’t figure out what in the world felt good about it.

Cas blinked back. “Because I’m… male.”

Oh, geez. “For a real smart guy, you can be really fucking dumb sometimes,” Dean chuckled, scraping the pad of a finger along the little crease of Cas’s jaw. Cas was still lying on top of him—not quite heavy, but _there_ , dense and solid. Real. “You’re _you_ , you assbutt.”

He was _Dean’s_ , was what he was.

Cas squinted at him. “Did you just call _me_ an assbutt?” he grumbled.

“I guess I did.”

And that was that.

*_*_*_*

Cas was kissing him—and the best thing about kissing a ghost? Cas felt real, he _was_ real—so damned real in moments like this—but Dean could breathe right through it. They could kiss _forever_ , and the only thing stopping them was that after a while, Dean’s tongue got kind of tired. His lips didn’t even get chapped or sore or dry. Or swollen, for that matter.

He finally backed off and pressed his thumb to that wet little dip Cas had in his full upper lip. Castiel blinked hazily at him. Cas would never have that well-fucked, slack look to his face or his body; that just wasn’t the way they worked. But at least he got this really satisfied, content expression to his face after he’d wrecked Dean into a puddle, that eternal stress smoothing out of his forehead and the corners of his eyes, mouth soft and lips just a little parted.

He had that look now.

“I enjoyed that _very_ much,” he said, happily, like he could hear what Dean was thinking.

He meant it—it was written all over his body language, and his glow was lemon-yellow, almost the color of sunshine.

Still, though. “Wish I could get you off, too,” Dean said, wistfully running a hand down the fine contour of Cas’s waist, tucking his fingertips along that fucking elegant vee of his hips. Cas wasn’t hard anymore, and Dean petted a finger gently up and down the soft curve of his cock before lifting his hand away. “You know?”

Cas smiled crookedly. They _had_ really tried, a bunch of times, and Cas enjoyed his body being touched and stroked and licked now and again. But either they hadn’t figured out how to get him off, or he just… couldn’t. “I can touch _you_. Make love to you. That’s everything to me. And it looks like it feels so good.”

Dean narrowed his eyes at him, suspiciously. “Wait.” He poked Cas in the shoulder. “Isn’t that like looking at a pie you can’t eat?”

What? It made total sense in Dean’s head. Good sex was the _best,_ and so was pie.

Cas shook his head, still smiling so damned sweetly. “I imagine it’s like making a pie and watching someone you love enjoy it. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

Okay, he hadn’t seen that one coming. Dean’s heart beat so hard in his chest he felt the pounding of it go all the way up to his cheeks. “Shit, you really can’t say things like that.”

This time, Cas laughed, and God, what the sound of that did to Dean. Every single fucking time, that hoarse, rare little laugh tore him apart and remade him a little, ‘cause there’d been a bleak stretch there, where he’d been so sure he’d never hear it again. “You really can’t stop me.”

“Asshole,” Dean muttered, but he slid down the bed and let his head sink down onto the dip of Cas’s shoulder anyway, closing his eyes happily as Cas nosed at his hair, the feeling of his aura buzzing against Dean’s scalp.

He knew when he woke up he’d be clean again. No crusty grossness on his belly, no mess of lube on his ass or the sheets. Sleeping with a ghost had really weird upsides, sometimes. Though, hell, after their first time, waking up completely clean, Dean had pretty much convinced himself that he was having horny teenager dreams all over again, and he’d hardly been able to look Cas in the eye—glow—whatever—when they met up at home that night.

Thank God it’d been spring, then, and sunset had still been coming pretty early, because when Cas got corporeal enough that Dean could finally see him, he’d looked _heartbroken_.

“Did you… did you not enjoy what we did?” he’d whispered, his light so pale and sickly that Dean hadn’t been able to place it on the color spectrum at all. “Oh, Dean, I’m so sorry.”

Funny thing: the whole soulmate thing didn’t keep them from occasionally having really weird and stupid misunderstandings. Like that one.

With that in mind, Dean frowned and opened his eyes again, thinking. Cas liked to touch, sure, but it was pretty rare for him to ask for sex, and tonight had been something else. Not that Dean was complaining, but he had more than a decade of knowing when Cas was chewing something over, and he seemed to be thinking pretty hard.

He reached over and ran a hand down Cas’s arm. “Something on your mind, sweetheart?”

The sheets rustled—it must be pretty late; even when he was solid to _Dean’s_ touch, Cas’s body didn’t often rumple the sheets. Cas’s arm carefully settled around Dean’s shoulders, almost tentative, and Dean chuckled and settled in.

“That nice girl from the yoga studio,” Cas began, slowly. “Lisa. She asked you if you wanted to go for Sunday brunch.”

Yeah, she had, just that morning. It hadn’t been the first time—the other time, she’d asked if he wanted to go out to dinner. Dean had smiled and told her ‘No thanks,’ both times. He hadn’t felt bad about it. Hell, he hadn’t thought twice about it. He had Cas to get home to.

Holy hell, wait, had Cas been _jealous_? Okay, that was fucking _adorable_.

“You been keeping tabs on me, sweetheart?” Dean teased.

Cas’s light flashed orange for a second. “I, um. I check in on you in the shop, sometimes,” Cas told him—so earnest still. Dean honestly didn’t know how the hell he’d been a defense attorney for as long as he had. “Just to make sure you’re okay! I wasn’t—it wasn’t—I’m not…” he stammered.

Well, yeah, Dean knew that Cas was still sometimes around during the day—just a feeling now and again, though not most of the time. Just because he couldn’t _see_ Cas in the daytime didn’t mean he actually evaporated into thin air. Cas just had other shit to do that didn’t involve Dean Winchester.

The idea of Cas lying flat on his belly on top of a Mustang Dean was restoring, peeking out from the shadow of his trench coat and glaring ghostily over at Lisa, made Dean chuckle. He poked Cas in the side when his aura started to turn shades of tangerine again—even darker this time than that soft sex-glow he got—and laughed. “Cas, I know, man,” he elbowed him gently, fondly. “And even if you were watchin’, I got nothin’ to hide from you.” He’d spent a _decade_ hiding what he shouldn’t. Enough was enough. “Lisa’s a nice lady. But everyone knows I don’t date.”

Yeah, Dean knew there was more than one person who’d put two and two together and realized just when he’d stopped—when he’d put away the flirting and the smiles and the winks. Dean knew that the conclusions they’d come to would have bothered him in the bad old times. But, well, they weren’t _wrong_ conclusions, and watching the love of your life get lowered into the ground put a lot of fucking things into perspective.

It’d been two years, now, since he’d gotten Cas back. Dean didn’t regret a day of it.

Cas looked at him from his position on their bed, and he turned onto his side. His knee bumped against Dean’s with a warm press and tingle. He reached over and put a hand on Dean’s stomach, and Dean—casually and not at all casually—put his own over it, slotting their fingers together. “It’s just… I’ve been… I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh, now we’re _really_ in trouble,” Dean joked.

Cas narrowed his eyes at him, but he didn’t sass back. “What would…” Cas chewed on his lower lip and Dean licked his own, eagerly, watching the white press of Cas’s teeth. Maybe tonight _was_ one of those nights when Cas was gonna want to be touched? “What would you think of, um. Going out?”

Dean blinked, but he shrugged. “I mean, I don’t mind. Where d’you wanna go?” Dean grinned at him. “We gonna have date night? Hey, that could be fun, s’been awhile. Movie?” He leered. “You could sit on my lap.” There had to be at least one upside to the fact that no-one could see Cas but him.

Going out like that tired Cas out—or maybe he cashed in chips for it, Dean didn’t exactly know, but whenever they’d done that before, Cas had disappeared for a few days after. If he wanted to try it again, though, Dean was game. They couldn’t eat out together, of course—Dean had done the whole douchey thing of pretending he was talking into an earpiece throughout dinner a grand total of _once_ —but maybe they could go driving and look at stars somewhere nice. Or, hey, maybe camping or something?

(Yeah, Cas was definitely it for him. Dean wouldn’t even go camping for _Sammy’s_ sake.)

Cas didn’t take the bait. He chewed harder on his lower lip, instead. “I… yes, date night, but… not…” Cas’s shoulders moved up and down like he was gulping for air, even though he didn’t have to breathe anymore. “Not with me.”

Dean’s realization took a good thirty seconds and Cas actually glancing over at him but, unlike normal, refusing to hold his gaze.

Wait, what? No, he couldn’t mean that. That was a really stupid and really weird joke, or some kind of lawyer humor that Dean wasn’t getting—

Cas was talking again, right through Dean’s bewilderment—this time, his voice lower and coarse like sand on a wound, not a mumble only because of the way it carried. He had his eyes fixed on the tense curve of his own thumbs. “I… I would ask that you not bring them back here, if that’s alright, but I really think—"

Fuck, he really _had_ meant exactly what Dean had thought.

Dean lost any traces of his smile and flushed a half-formed and really terrible threesome joke. Holy shit, Cas _wasn’t_ _kidding_. “What?” he breathed, shocked. “No. Oh _hell_ no. God, Cas! _Fuck!_ I’m not going to do that. Why would I want to do any of that?!”

Cas looked away. He flopped back onto his side of the bed, his head propped up against his forearm. With his limbs all sticking out like that and with him lying on top of the mattress, if Dean ignored the fact that he was glowing just enough to cast a faint dishwater shadow across the sheets and his elbow was poking _through_ the headboard, they could just have been having a nice little talk in bed.

Or not so nice. _“Well?”_ Dean demanded.

Cas looked at the ceiling and sighed. “I just… I didn’t… ask you if you… if you wanted any of this. I chose this for us. I never asked. I couldn’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that I _didn’t._ You’re so full of _life,_ Dean, you always have been.” He smiled, unhappily, up at the ceiling, and folded both his hands on his stomach. “I always knew, you know, even before. How your smile touches everyone you meet. How _physical_ you are. It was part of why I… I never said anything. But you _have_ to want more than this. Don’t you?”

Dean twisted onto his side to face him with a violence that almost wrenched his back. “Do _you_?”

“No.” Cas’s chin moved just a little to the side, just enough that their eyes could meet. Cas looked so sad again—when he was alive, he often had. Dean had always thought it was because Cas had a tough job, and he worked himself to the bone for people who half the time hadn’t even known enough to be grateful for it. “No, of course not. What we have… this is everything, to me. You’re my soulmate, Dean, that’s the only reason we _can_ have this.”

If Dean hadn’t been so upset, Cas saying something like that would have made him blush all over. But the red of Dean’s cheeks right now wasn’t the least bit out of pleasure. “Then why’re you tryin’ to sell me off like yesterday’s bagels?!” he growled.

“Because you deserve _more._ ” To Dean’s horror, the color of Cas’s glow was _dimming_. “You’re _alive_ , Dean. You should go _be_ alive,” he insisted. “We’ll have forever, but what about _now?_ You should make love to girls—or boys, if that pleases you—and go out for Sunday brunch while you’re still sleepy from the night before. Not…”

A second later, Cas was fully dressed again, suit and tie and even his _socks,_ like he was trying to make a point. He gestured at himself like Dean was supposed to find that point somewhere in his suit pockets. “I can’t even hold hands in the sun with you. Share a drink. Laugh with your friends. I’ll still be here—I’ll always be here—but… I don’t want you to be…” Cas’s Adam’s apple rolled, but his deep voice stayed steady. “…trapped.”

“Do I look _trapped_ to you?” Dean reached out and grabbed Cas’s hand. This late at night, his fingers didn’t even sink in; Cas’s skin was cold and glowing a sickly kind of grey, but it was solid, and so real. “I must be the only damned person in Kansas who looks forward to winter, so the nights are longer.” He was so angry he could feel himself shaking, wide awake, adrenaline-hot. He really wished he wasn’t the only one naked now, but he wasn’t getting off the bed to put on clothes. “Cas, I’d trade every day I’ve got in the sun to hear you laugh again even fucking _once_.”

“But—”

“ _No_!” Goddamned martyr. Dean clung harder, even after Cas’s glow started to creep further up his wrist like it was protecting Cas, and ouch, that kind of _stung_ —unpleasantly icy. “Also, where the fuck did you get that I have _ever_ been into Sunday brunch?”

Cas blinked at him, slowly, and the glow started drawing back in his direction, leaving Dean’s hand feeling like it’d fallen asleep on him rather than like he’d stuck it into an ice cube tray. He flexed his fingers as feeling started to come back into them.

“You have an unhealthy obsession with bacon,” Cas observed, vaguely.

“Well, I can have bacon anytime I want,” Dean told him, maybe a little too aggressively.

“Yes, I know, Dean.” Cas frowned. “You _routinely_ have it for dinner.”

Dean snorted. Just because it was true didn’t mean Cas had to say it like that. “There you go. What do I need brunch for?”

“This is the most absurd argument I think I’ve ever had, and I was an _attorney,_ ” Cas muttered, but he let himself go limp back on the bed, and his light had traces of blue going through again, like the color of those first few moments when the fog lifted from the sky on a spring morning.

Dean turned the rest of the way over and wrapped himself around Cas, and he didn’t care if anyone called this snuggling. It was gonna take a crowbar to get him peeled off Cas’s side tonight. Fucking _idiot_.

“Just sayin’,” he mumbled, into the top of Cas’s head. From this close, even with his eyes closed, the faint white-blue glow tickled under his eyelashes, cool and comforting and getting a little brighter again. Cas’s suit jacket was rough and wooly against his chest. Dean slung his leg over both of Cas’s. “How would I sleep without my lava lamp?”

“You’re an idiot,” Cas sighed, but Dean thought he felt relief dip all the way through the line of his body. His hand crept up and into Dean’s hair, stroking, with a gentle little tug at his roots. “Go to sleep.”

Cas was gone by the time Dean’s alarm went off the next morning. There was thin summer sunshine filtering through the blinds; blackout curtains didn’t make a difference in keeping Cas there longer, they’d found.

Dean _was_ probably the only person in all of Lawrence, Kansas who really looked forward to winter: it was dark outside when he got up, dark when he got home from work, and his place— _their_ place—was lit with a soft, crystal, white-blue glow throughout.

“ _You’re_ the fucking idiot,” Dean told the bare apartment, knowing Cas was probably still around, but he wouldn’t be able to sass him back right now, “if you think it’s that easy to get rid of me.”

He thought Cas almost, _almost_ managed to poke him in the side, but that might’ve just been the shifting of his t-shirt against his ribs. Dean grinned and stuck his tongue out at the room, then stood up to scratch his belly and get ready for the rest of the day.

No, he didn’t know exactly where Cas went when the sun was up. He was invisible, but he still _existed_ —not always hanging around Dean, either, but sometimes he thought he could feel his gaze. Now and again, like last night, Cas confirmed that he’d been looking in. He just kind of turned into, well… light, probably.

Dean _had_ asked once—once the blank-shock wonder of having Cas back, having Cas _his,_ wore off. Dean Winchester knew that nothing came for free. Not even miracles—not even for soulmates, or whatever they were. Maybe especially not miracles.

They’d given him Castiel back in the evenings—for one measly human lifetime. Cas had made a _deal._ What did that mean? What had that _cost?_

It was weeks, if not months, after Cas came back that Dean got up the nerve to ask him about that. Back then, Dean had thought there was a pretty good chance he’d just gone fucking mad. But he was afraid that if he questioned it, he’d come home in the evening one day and reach out and touch not just invisibility, but _nothing_. Every time he thought about holding out a hand and not having _anything_ drawn against his palm, his throat slammed shut.

“What did you have to give up?” he finally asked, when he could finally get the words out past the memory of the first shovelful of dirt hitting a fancy wooden coffin.

“That’s not how I think about my deal, Dean.” Cas shook his head and smiled, putting a hand on the back of Dean’s neck in a hold that felt like that soft raspy stuff they used to fluff up the outside of wedding gowns. “I can’t tell you about it. Not… yet. But I didn’t give up anything that I wasn’t willing to give,” he said, bringing their foreheads together in a brush of static. “I’m not doing anything that I’m not happy to do.”

But Dean remembered what he’d seen that first time, even if Cas probably didn’t think he did.

He remembered the way the equipment around his hospital bed had sparked and spat. He remembered the way Cas had been so angry, his eyes had glowed—blazed with it.

Most of all, he remembered the dark shadows: arching out from behind Cas’s shoulders and his ugly beige trench coat, yawning across the white hospital walls in the silhouette of six huge wings—stretched corner to corner, floor to ceiling, with feathers spread.

Dean hadn’t been afraid. He hadn’t wanted to drop to his knees and beg forgiveness for his sins. He hadn’t even really been all that _surprised_.

He’d thought, _Oh. Well, fuck, of course,_ because even if nothing else in Dean’s life made sense? That, right there, that did.

Dean never asked again.

So yeah, God, or Heaven, or whoever it was, could have Cas during the day. He didn’t know what he’d traded for them to have this, or exactly what Cas did with their time apart. Answered prayers, probably. Saved babies from burning buildings. Found people’s lost car keys. (Threw them at their heads, ‘cause he was a grumpy fucker about people being disorganized.) Whatever.

Dean didn’t have to know. That was what trust was about, after all.

He held out his palm. Cas, invisible, drew a sun-warm little heart on it.

The _dork._

Dean smiled and said, “Love you, too, buddy,” into the air, and started the process of getting dressed.

Sunset would come again soon enough.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this one turned out rather odd again, didn't it? Hm. And kinkier than I expected, honestly...
> 
> The prompt, from saraa: Soulmate AU "if your soulmate dies before you, they turn into a ghost that only you can see and stay with you until your death"
> 
> The very cool brake line jury-rig came from [Pallas!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PallasPerilous/pseuds/PallasPerilous)
> 
> This prompt, as with almost everything that inspires me these days, came from the [Profound Bond Discord Server](https://discord.gg/profoundbond). Come join us!


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